When I was told by my brother —who was visiting in the US—that he and his family were going to watch Scorsese’s Silence, I immediately implored my sister-in-law to buy me Shusaku Endo’s “Silence”, the 1966 award-winning novel that provided Scorsese with his material. “Silence” might justly be characterized as a “historical novel” because it is inspired by events in the painful history of Christianity in Japan.
I was glued to the novel, from the time I started reading it till two days later when I turned the last page. It was engaging, but not entertaining. Romances entertain. Fanciful tales entertain. This one was different. It engaged me and it gnawed at my soul, because I am a priest and this was a story of the struggles of a priest, not really with celibacy nor material wealth, but with “the very last temptation” there can be—the lure of unbelief and the agony of faith!
Sebastian Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe, Portuguese Jesuits, make their way to Japan—knowing fully well the persecution of Christians that is raging there, in search, mainly, of a former theology professor, Ferreira, once a renowned stalwart of the Society, who is rumored to have apostatized in the face of torture and the punishments he had to endure. Rodrigues and Garrpe are not willing to believe that an admired mentor has betrayed the faith and reneged on his priestly promises. They come upon isolated bands of frightened but fervent Christians who have organized themselves —without priest or minister—in an admirable effort to keep the faith alive. Separated from Garrpe, Rodrigues sees the immense and unspeakable trials visited on the Japanese Christians—who heroically remain steadfast and do not apostatize. It is as captives that Rodrigues and Garrpe are re-united, but very shortly thereafter, Garrpe drowns, virtually martyred by daimyos and their men.
Throughout the narrative, Rodrigues holds before his mind’s eye the countenance of Christ— the face that he saw as a seminarian on church walls and sacred pictures, so full of love, compassion, mercy and kindness. He is captivated by this face, entranced by it. It inspires him. It keeps him going —enduring the innumerable difficulties of captivity. But once in prison, he is faced with the horrors of the “ordeal of the pit”, not he, but the Japanese faithful who had looked up to him. Suspended upside down by their ankles and tightly bound by ropes, they are let down in a pit with narrow slits cut behind their ears to allow blood to ooze slowly from them, without causing instantaneous death and so prolonging the agony for days if not weeks. Rodrigues soon meets Ferreira—and is filled with loathing for the priest he once admired because he sees that Ferreira has in fact apostatized. But Rodrigues soon realizes that the hapless Japanese Christians hang from the pit and moan and groan as life slowly and painfully ebbs away only because he does not apostatize. Ferreira assures him that when he apostatizes, they will be freed from their misery.
But there is an interesting twist to the story. Both the daimyo Inonue, notorious for bringing even the most steadfast of priests to apostasy, and Ferreira tell him that Christianity cannot really take root in Japan. There is no soil for it in Japan, and what Rodrigues thought was Christianity that he found among the faithful was some grotesque belief into which Christianity had morphed in that forbidding country. He is also told that he does not have to turn against his Deus and Jesus Christ in his heart. All he has to do is to make a show of trampling on the fumi-e, a crude image of Christ, and he would be let go. Even Christ would apostatize for love of his people. That is Ferreira’s line that shakes him rudely from his self-assurance. Was he being more faithful as a priest by stubbornly refusing to abnegate, or would he be following in the footsteps of the merciful Christ would do all and give all out of love for the suffering? Almost in a stupor he is taken before the daimyos and he looks at the face on the fumi-e. “Trample, for that is why I came into the world: to be trampled upon so that all might live”, the face seems to tell him. Is this not in fact the core of the theology of atonement? And so he tramples on the very face that inspired him, that enamored him, in a gesture that—quite strangely, also liberated him.
Thereafter he was known as Apostate Paul. But Endo makes it clear that he had not really apostatized, he had not severed his longing for the Lord, and that is what made his “betrayal” more painful. He was not free. In fact, he remained a prisoner. In his spirit, he remained a priest of Jesus Christ, aware that while, in a sense, he had to turn his back on his Master, he did so too in imitation of the Lord whose mercy disposed him to shed the very last drop of his blood for the sake of others!
Silence—it is the silence of God that troubled Rodrigues most. Why should God be silent amid the suffering of his people? Why should God be silent while his people received the most savage blows because of their fidelity to him? That is the novel’s nagging question. That is the question that perturbs every believer. Somewhere towards the end of the novel, there is a mysterious answer proposed: “I was not silent. I was suffering with you.” That intrigues me because it calls for a totally different concept of God, one that will not have God intervening at every cruel turn, and saving his children from pain and misery.
The silence of God is a reproach only when one thinks that one knows when God should speak, but that is a tremendous assumption, is it not. It is a projection of a “big brother” image—one who hovers over a child to keep him from every tripping, who corrects all his mistakes and shields him from all wrong. Of course, this keeps a child forever a child. But if one sees God in the fidelity of people no matter the suffering they must endure, if one sees God in the constant summons to be faithful and true, no matter the ugliness, misery and poverty (an ubiquitous scene in Endo’s portrayal of the pockets of Japan that had received the faith), then one is entertaining a notion of God that is not challenged by silence, whose very presence can be revealed in silence!
In the end, Rodrigues, who has been given a Japanese name and a Japanese wife, dies —still reproaching himself for his betrayal, and in that irony, still faithful. He dies and is cremated in Buddhist rites. Through it all, God remains silent, but in the silence of Rodrigues’ own agony till the end and his loathing for Ferreira in whom he saw himself, in his constant recollection of the beautiful face that had kept him in the seminary, and on which he had trampled, one is told about the power and magnificence of this Deus!
Scorsese, my brother and sister-in-law tell me, directed a beautiful movie: powerful in cinematography and excellent in its artistry. But one has to read the novel to accept Endo’s challenge to think about God and about oneself—in silence!